


This House of Bones

by drowsyreaper



Series: Nevermore [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: 1920s, Attempted Murder, Baltimore, Baltimore is its own warning honestly, Curses, Flappers, Ghosts, Murder, Occult, Occult Shenanigans, Other, Supernatural Elements, Vikings, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 13,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drowsyreaper/pseuds/drowsyreaper
Summary: A cursed viking spirit. An occultist flapper. A grieving child.Three different souls from three different times will meet in a Baltimore rowhouse at the end of summer. Not all of them will survive.





	1. Matti

The Angel of Death stands before him with a knife. His king is beside her, face grim and eyes burning. 

He kneels in the snow. It's cold here at the waters' edge, colder than in the village. The village. His people. They're far away, lost in the dark. Dawn is a myth, the dream of a child. The world is a frozen, shadowed thing. No help will come. 

His arms are bound. At either side of him stand his brothers-in-arms, men he's known and fought beside all his life. He looks at their faces and they are strangers who will not meet his eyes. 

He knows what they want from him. 

He is afraid. 

There must be a mistake. A misunderstanding. Did he somehow offend? 

He knows he hasn't. He has been loyal. Devoted to his lord and king, and their people. He's shed oceans of blood for their survival and glory. 

But that's why. Too much blood. Too much glory. Too much strength that his king could not possess. 

The Angel approaches with knife in one hand and a bowl in the other. She means to bleed him. His brothers tighten their hold on him. He meets his kings' gaze, and as his throat is cut, he does not look away.


	2. Calliope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calliope Jones is ready.

Calliope Jones stood on the sidewalk before the house in Union Square and surveyed her battlefield. The three-story town home, with its' tall, wide windows that lit up the winter night, was alive with the shadows and sounds of a  _really_ good party. Calliope had come to crash it.

It was Christmas Eve and she was making her Baltimore debut. She’d spent weeks on this, making sure this was the right party for her. The right host. Last thing she needed was a repeat of Boston.

The money in Baltimore may not have carried the prestige of some of those Boston brownstones, but it spent just as well. And the John whose house this was came from old money - horses, she thought, or something with four legs that smelled. His interests were a little less terrestrial, though, and a lot more arcane. Cal's kind of man.

She stepped up to the door, rang the bell once, and walked in anyway. A party like this, everyone was a friend until the hooch ran out or the cops came 'round. Calliope never stayed anywhere long enough to be anything less than your best pal. She dropped her coat on a pile by the door, where she might get away with picking up mink by “accident”. She'd had to hock her seal coat and beaver fur hat when she was in Philly and goddammit if that didn’t still  _burn_.

No, things were different now. Cal had cut her losses, was doing this herself so there’d be no more foul-ups. 

Ahead of her, a tall staircase led up, up, up, and was littered with necking couples and the drunken flotsam who'd drifted out of the parlor on the right. Cal peered in. Chairs and tables had been pushed to the side to make a dance floor, and a mob of people were doing the Charleston while a negro band played in the corner of the next room.

For half a tick, she thought about joining them, making some friends, quenching that thirst of hers. Baltimore was a wet city, but still, it was hard for a girl on her own to wet her whistle as often as she'd like. No, focus. She'd do it later. If things went as well as she thought they would, she wouldn't need to worry about money for a while. She went straight up, up the tall stairs and through the maze of human debris. If she nicked someone's drink on the way up, nobody saw.

The second floor was less populated, but not by much. The only difference was the presence of locked doors between guests and Cal's prying eyes. That was fine. What Cal wanted was the next floor up, anyway. She climbed on.

By the third floor landing, the music was a hollow, haunted sound. For a moment, the woman who called herself Calliope Jones stood at the top of the landing, listening to the empty sounds of life below her, eyes trained on the flickering yellow light that spilled out of the far doorway.

 _We don't have to do this_ , an old voice whispered from somewhere inside.  _We can leave right now. We can stop this. No one will ever know._ _Boston_ _can just be a bad dream_.

Aloud, and in a voice that was not quite Calliope but wasn't that whispering thing either, she declared, "Cowardice is unbecoming."

Armed with a smile made for war, she entered the far room.


	3. Renata

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Black's move into their new home.

The Black family moved into the house in Union Square in the early spring.

(By winter, two of them would be dead.)

Mark had reservations from the beginning. West Baltimore was not a place people moved back to if they could help it. And not with a young daughter who'd grown up in the relative safety of the county. But...

(There was something wrong with this house.)

But there'd been problems. It was an open secret that the KKK ran the boy scouts and PTA in their town, and as Renata's classmates had gotten older, their teasing had taken on the mean, denigrating edge of their parents. Maybe, he thought, maybe it wasn't a bad idea to move somewhere Renata would just be another face in the crowd instead of the Black Girl. But where Monica wanted them to move to....

Monica, his wife of 15 years, had always wanted more than what they had. He didn't begrudge her that, not really. Hadn't that same hunger gotten him what he'd always wanted? A house with a yard, front and back, and windows on all four walls. On a street where the sound of sirens was the exception and not the rule. A life where the neighborhood bigots really were the worst of his problems. It wasn't enough for Monica.

Monica wanted what her clients had: historic homes with period appropriate furniture and décor, lovingly and tastefully chosen by herself. The mansions of Roland Park were ideal, but she'd settle for one of the Painted Ladies near Hopkins, or a stone townhome in Charles Village, tucked between Mount Vernon and MICA. Someplace with value, situated near other things with value, like museums and fancy schools and monuments and take-out sushi. She wanted the sort of life their ancestors might've cleaned up after but never possessed.

And truly, Mark didn't find any fault in striving for that. Hadn't he promised her that if their finances ever got right, if they found such a house and they could make the money work, then he'd move with her? Gladly, even. And he'd meant every word of it. In his heart of hearts, though, he had to admit he never thought such a time would come. It did not look at all like what he'd expected.

(It was a goddamned trap.)

The house was beautiful. You could say a lot about the neighborhood - and Mark did – but the house was beyond reproach. Though no one had lived there for decades, the property managers had kept it up and made sure all the important things like plumbing and electric were up to date. There were bars over all the first-floor windows, but that was just sensible. The paint was fresh enough. The kitchen and bathrooms had been done up sometime within the last 10 years. There was even a treasure trove of antiques left over from the last owner in the 1920's, so the place was already partly furnished with the furniture his wife loved.

(Why had it stayed empty so long? This neighborhood hadn't started going downhill until the 60's or 70's.)

He hadn't realized Monica had taken him at his word. The moment her promotion came in – a big one, thanks to some work she'd done sprucing up the lieutenant governor's house in time for Christmas – she'd presented him with a folder full of houses.

He told his mother, in a phone call she wouldn't think of until it was much too late, that he'd been overcome by a shadow of premonition, a claustrophobia of the senses. He felt, in those first moments when he crossed the threshold, that this was not a place for living people. But then the light shifted with the passing of a cloud, the foyer brightened, and the feeling was gone. Mark had been glad. Feelings like that belonged to people like his granny, who traded in nothing but superstition and intangibles. His parents, and thus he himself, had always been above such nonsense.

Their 11 year old daughter, Renata, had no such compunction about feelings or the expression thereof.

"We're not really going to live here, are we?" She asked from the doorway, one hand tight on the door jam in a white knuckled grip. Her face peered anxiously up the staircase from beneath her fringe of permed black hair. Marc felt at once a wave of affection for his daughter who looked so like him, and a return of that claustrophobia. There was a roar in his ears like the churning of the ocean.

Abruptly, he wanted nothing more than to grab her up – his little girl, his little princess – and take her as far from this place as possible. There was a park nearby, and a bus stop right in the sunlight. They could catch a bus, leave Monica the car to get home if she could leave at all -

He caught sight of Monica’s face, her expression of dismay tightening into outrage, and recognized a much more familiar threat to protect his daughter from.

"I'll talk to her," he told his wife, then wrapped an arm around Renata's shoulder and led her into the house.

"You know, your mom's always wanted to live in a place like this. Ever since she was a little girl."

Renata cut in, "If wanting something forever is all it takes, does that mean you're going to buy me a pony one day?"

"Well, if you find me one cheap enough," he said, trailing off at the end and waiting for his daughter to laugh. She didn't.

"Look, honey, sometimes we make sacrifices for the people we love, and sometimes those sacrifices mean we have to live in a big, old house we don't really like. _Yet_. You’re going to grow to love this place, I promise you. And do you know why?” Renata shook her head. “Because your mama likes it and she has _exquisite_ taste.

"And listen; it’s even better than we’d thought we’d get. We don’t have to do a big renovation like we were talking about. You've got the _whole_ third floor to yourself, lucky girl. You’re going to be the sleepover _queen_ with all that space up there! We've just got to clean up a little and maybe let your mom tire herself out picking new paint, and this place is move in ready. Wait and see, you'll come home from school one day and this place will look like something out of a catalog."

Mark could tell she wasn’t sold, so he leaned in for the kill. “And _maybe_ , if your mama’s good mood holds out like this and we don’t go poking at her with the things we don’t like, just maybe I can talk to her about that puppy again....”

Renata just watched her father with solemn, doubtful eyes. That was normal, he told himself; Renata had always been a little too serious for her age. And Monica, well, Monica wasn’t always the best at remembering promises to people who weren’t paying her.

"There's something wrong with this house, Daddy." She was scared. Mark realized he was too. Just a little, he told himself.

(Houses didn’t stay empty without a reason. Not nice ones. What was this gingerbread trap-)

"No one's lived here for a long time, baby girl." He didn't contradict her. That, he felt, was very important. "People leave behind their own kind of noise, and when it's gone, places can feel very different. Like the auditorium at your school, you told me it feels fine when everyone's there, but when you go in by yourself, it feels spooky? This is the same thing. Just, a house instead of an auditorium. It'll feel better when we're all moved in. I promise."

Renata remained unconvinced, but didn't argue and he didn't press the matter. He'd done the best he could for now. Some things wouldn’t settle until the move was over and they were going to have to live with that. He was going to have to live with that.

Together, they went in search of Monica. The first floor was empty, but they heard her familiar staccato tread coming from above and slowly, they climbed the stairs. He felt that chill again as they ascended but brushed it off as quickly as it had come. It was an old house, and old houses were always strange, or so he'd been told. They all just needed time to get used to it. He was going to have to be a good model for Renata. The last thing they needed was their imaginations running off with them.

He ran through the facts again. Structurally, the house was sound; the only changes needed were cosmetic, or so he'd been assured by the four separate inspectors he'd been compelled to hire before they bought the place. It had been empty because the family who owned the place were of that sentimental breed who didn't like to part with what was theirs, but were too racist to willingly live in West Baltimore. It was cheap because most houses at this end of town were cheap, and the property managers were eager to be rid of the place after minding it for the better part of a century. It was as simple as that.

But that refrain began to wear thin as the days passed, and mops and brooms and buckets vanished as soon as they were put down, cabinets opened and closed behind his back, and friends arrived happy to help and left unnerved. A strange blonde woman kept appearing just over his shoulder in all his reflections. Renata wouldn't sleep in the bedroom Monica had picked for her, where a tall, cloudy mirror on a marble pedestal – a weighty, immovable relic from tenants' long past – sat in judgement from the corner of the room. The shadows...the shadows didn't move right. Mark didn't know how to describe it.

At the end of the first week, Mark had resolved to get out. He'd help Monica pay for this place, he'd stick by his promise, but he wasn't going to subject his little girl to whatever the hell was happening in her mother's Gothic Barbie Dreamhouse. They were leaving, just the two of them if that was what it came to. The rest was just logistics.

It was logistics he was agonizing over as he carried a box of Monica's office doodads up to the second floor that afternoon. Could he keep Renata in the same school district? Would it be better to rent in the city or the county? Maybe they could move in with his parents for a little while and save money. Should he and Monica legally separate, or would it be better to leave things open ended? _Surely_ , she'd come to see how wrong this house was. Even she couldn't possibly be that stubborn, no matter how much she wanted the house.

He came to a stop.

A few steps above him, at the top of the landing, stood a woman. She was tall – or maybe she wasn't – but she towered over Mark. Her skin was sallow and her eyes sunken and dark. Chin length hair was bright blonde, except at the roots, which were as dingy and colorless as the rest of her. She wore a flapper dress of all things, and Mark had a moment to consider the absurdity in being most surprised by her clothing before her hand came up and rested over his heart.

Then went into his heart.

Then he fell.

And fell.

And Renata came home from school.


	4. Matti II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is angry.

He is installed in a place of honor – the pommel of the kings' great sword, where he glistens and shines like the pretty thing he's been reduced to, and where he drinks deeply of the blood of his lords' enemies as it drips down the blade.

And this he remembers well from days of old, when his king led them to foreign shores and praised him as his strongest, most ruthless warrior, when he emerged from battle drenched in that hot, slick vitality. But in those days, he'd done his own killing, with the hands and limbs and body his king (his _king_ ) has taken from him, and there's a difference now, now that he is the treasure and not even the blade.

He is angry.

He is angry, and the sword is angry, and the king is angry, though he does not know why. He does not realize that the anger is not his own.

Not yet.


	5. Calliope II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calliope makes a first impression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of update last week! Work and computer issues collided and I'm so, so tired, guys. Just, the tiredest. Anyway, hope you all had a great Halloween, Dia de los Meurtos, Daylight Savings, and I think today is Guy Fawkes Day(?) so have fun destroying your tyrannical governments.
> 
> Enjoy and maybe set something on fire for me.

John Malcolm Howard was educated, well-heeled, and transparently eager to please. All things Calliope liked in her men. Better, his fascination with the occult may have actually outstripped her own. Best, he wasn’t half bad to look at; Calliope had known some high priests and swami’s with strange ideas about hygiene.

Problems happened when he opened his mouth, though. Luckily, Cal was born with a silver tongue, polished to a shine at the hands of cultists and occultists and straight up con artists. She could make this work.

Calliope walked into that front room on the third floor of Mr. Howard’s Union Square town house and found him and his inner circle trying to summon a demon. What must've once been a nice bedroom had been turned into a mishmash library and temple. Shelves were filled with books and fetishes she'd seen dozens of times before. An alter and all the usual humdrum was pulled away from its resting place along the western wall into the center of the room. Chairs and a pair of settees were pulled close around it, filled with wide-eyed, empty headed acolytes and an unevenly drawn Solomonic seal. They weren’t going to summon _anything_ from that higgledy-piggledy.

“Are - are you the demon?” A sweet, baby-faced boy asked, looking at her with big, star-struck eyes. Sweet little angel child. Sweet fresh meat. The world was gonna eat him alive if Calliope didn’t first.

Calliope fluttered her eye lids and smiled like a cat with a canary, and asked, “Why, is that what you were trying to summon? I certainly hope not. I’d be a poor excuse for a _daemonicum_. Can’t even manifest a simple set of stockings right.” And there she lifted the hem of her skirt, showing a run under the garter clasp and a great deal of slender leg with it. The men stared. So did the women. “I’m a _mali_ _spiritus_ at best, and even then only if the gin is good. Mind if I take a stab at that?” she asked, and shimmied her way into the circle.

She smudged out the chalk seal and drew a new one with swift, sure strokes. There was no way she was going to push her luck trying to summon Belial for them, and Bael was just too many steps to avoid insulting him. Andrealphus would be good though; give that big peacock a chance to strut. Given the sorry state of this group, even an imp would be impressive, but she knew better than to undersell her skills like that. She added an extra circle of protection, just in case, then reshuffled the group according to complimentary auras, bid them all think hellish thoughts, and they were off to the races!

_Camptown ladies, sing this song. Doo-dah, doo-dah!_

The trick to knowing when a demonic summoning has worked, Calliope knew, was that nothing _actually_ changed about where you were or who you were or what you were, except that everything was wrong, your dreams were trying to eat you, and if the feeling of all your bodily functions reversing didn’t kill you, that jangly singing and cannon fire in your head sure made you wish it would. And for some exasperating reason, it _always_ ended up sounding like “Camptown Ladies” to Cal.

Andrealphus could always be counted on to put on a good show, at least. The children were suitably impressed. And Mr. Howard, who’d looked on from outside the circle, was interested.

It looked like Cal was going to have a merry Christmas after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment, give kudos, or buy me a tea at ko-fi.com/drowsyreaper!


	6. Renata II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mark Black is laid to rest.

Mark Black was interred in New Cathedral Cemetery on a sunny June morning. He was sent off in glory to his Lord, surrounded by friends and family.

It was tragic, just tragic. The coroner had determined that he'd suffered a massive heart attack on the stairs, and then a broken back as a result of his fall. He was still so young and his daughter had been the one to find him. It was so sad, truly, a tragedy to be sure, and everyone hurried to console his young daughter that there was nothing she could have done, no way the ambulance could've gotten to him on time, that he was a good man and he was in heaven and he wouldn't want her to suffer any guilt.

Renata didn’t feel guilty. She felt angry, and sad, and so, so scared. She felt like, like that time at the ocean, when she’d gone too far out and the sand had disappeared beneath her feet and all that was left was deep dark ocean full of monsters and riptides and currents and waves of endless eternal power pushing and pulling and pulling and pulling her down _down_ **_down_** and-

Daddy wasn’t coming to save her this time.

And she felt _tired_. Tired of swimming and of being scared and of being alone. Everyone said she and her mama had to take care of each other now, that they had to lean on one another to get through this. But Monica didn’t lean. She stood tall and strong in the face of tragedy, and she did it alone. And she must’ve wanted it that way because when Renata had tried to talk to her, tried to tell her what she knew, what she felt, Monica had gone icy cold.

She didn’t want to know the truth.

The truth was that her daddy’s death was a murder, not an accident. The truth was that the murderer was still in the house, watching Renata, laughing at her. The truth was that her daddy wasn’t in heaven, couldn’t be, because Renata saw him wandering the house, missing more and more pieces of himself each time and Renata didn’t know how to help him. The truth was that she was absolutely terrified of going back to that house and whatever waited for them there. The truth was a terrible thing to carry alone. At the funeral, surrounded by family, she was able to tell her grandparents that last truth, the easiest one.

"Monica,” Nana began, scolding her daughter in her firm, gentle way – a way Monica had all the strength of, but none of the softness. “It can't be healthy for y’all to live there. It’s not even a home yet, you’re still moving things in, and now it’s got this terrible memory attached to it.... Sell it, baby. Let me and your Pop take Renata while you deal with the house; at the very least, she can grieve somewhere she knows, with family close by. And your Pop knows some people who can help move everything out in no time and-"

"We're staying," Monica said. And that was that.

Renata swam in the deep dark waters with her truth, waiting to drown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LIVE. Computer issues are the worst.
> 
> Buy me a tea (or a new laptop) at http://ko-fi.com/drowsyreaper/ !


	7. Matti III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays. Have some magic viking drama.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally got a laptop so I could finally finish editing this so I could finally post it and finally get back to a regular posting schedule that wasn't reliant on when I was at work! I'm so happy, guys! I've missed you. <3

The king was old. Older than any king before him, and older than any of his subjects. The Angel of Death was even older, thought to be as old and steadfast as the mountains. But even she couldn’t live forever. The old mother sank into her final sleep that winter, passing her mantle on to a wise and terrible maiden.

The successor had come to them some years before, barely more than a girl but full of a cunning the Angel admired, and she’d become a devoted student. The people called her Shadow, silent and ever present, watching as the Angel did her duty to king and countrymen.

She had come after his death. He remembered the Angel, wretched and withered, presenting the woman-child before the king. He remembered her staring at the king, at the sword, at him. She had seen him and known what he was. And now it would be this maiden-Angel, this Shadow, who spoke in the kings’ ear and did his will.

The king called her to his side when the old witch was buried. He wanted to live, he said, and the old witch had failed on her promise.

_How_ , The Shadow asked, with her dark, knowing eyes. _There is still vitality in you. You still breathe. Are you not alive?_

_I am an old man and my body fails me_ , the king said. _This is no life._

_Then she did not fail,_ The Shadow said, her restless reaching hands grasping without aim at her sides. _She granted you life when what you wanted was youth. That was your error, not hers._

The king said nothing and did nothing, but his skin went ruddy and his spirit raged. He felt as though he’d been made a mockery. Who was it that laughed at him in the silent hall? The Shadow looked at the sword. Laughing within his crystal prison, he stared back.

_Do as I will_ , he commanded at last.

The Shadow had been a worthy student.

The stone was moved from the pommel of the kings' great sword to the center of his circlet, where it gazed upon the world from his weathered brow. A king should keep his power close to himself, The Shadow said. He had the essence of his most powerful warrior at his disposal. Why bestow that power on a tool when he could have it for his own self?

The king was old, older than anyone else. And he was weak. It was a small thing to push such a frail old fool aside when _he_ was forever as strong as he’d been when the king cut him down.

He'd been a weapon for so long, he'd nearly forgotten what it was to be a man. The Shadow reminded him, though. With those restless hands, she taught him how best to fill the old man's body, how to make it his own. Behind those dark eyes was a clever mind that wove spells to draw him from his crystal prison into mortal flesh and muttered in his ear secrets about the shadows he lived amidst. She gave him back hands to grasp and legs that trembled and an old heart that stuttered in a sunken chest as she rode him.

The old king breathed his last one winter night, so many winters after he'd murdered his best man no one remembered it but him. The Shadow fled before they could send for her, with treasure in her pockets and a child in her belly. She left no apprentice. The village burned and buried the king in honor. The circlet was buried with him.


	8. Calliope III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calliope settles in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what started as a quick edit turned into a rewrite which then turned into a succession of rewrites which then collided with starting a new job and learning SO. MANY. SYSTEMS. while also still doing my old job and holiday stuff and I'm still not entirely happy with this chapter but it has been WEEKS and I'm sick of looking at it so here. Have it. Happy Boxing Day.

After the Christmas party, after the summoning, Malcolm invited Calliope to visit an art dealer with him. Just a friendly outing to get to know one another better. Cal said yes.

(Though she might’ve made him beg a little first. Just to start things off on the right tone.)

One trip together turned into another and then another. By the feast of St. Agnes, she was moved into his house.

It was quick, even for Calliope. But when you struck gold, you kept digging, didn’t you? And Malcolm, for all that she’d first thought him a marble-mouthed twit with connections, had turned out to be so much more.

….

Calliope hadn’t realized it until after the party, when his house had been restored to order and the rest of his collection put back into place, that the alter room held the most mundane pieces. The best stuff, the most interesting and most potent, lay about his house like so much tchotchke.

“I love my friends,” he’d explained on one of their dates, when she’d finally seen the restored first floor, “but if I told them that the stele fragment in my study depicted rites to Ishtar, or the painting in the foyer supposedly housed the soul of the alchemist who’d commissioned it, they’d want to put their hands all over them. Keeping it all out like that makes it unimportant. Valuable in theory, but boring for their interests.”

Calliope cast a sly grin at him. “So what you’re saying is that you make friends with dummy’s. And on purpose no less! I think I might be insulted.” He laughed a full-bellied laugh at her faux-offense, head thrown back and cheeks pink.

“Unobservant!” he cried out in their defense. “They’re unobservant sometimes, but not stupid.” Cal raised an eyebrow. “O’Malley is a little stupid, but he was somebody’s plus-one; he’s rarely involved in anything more exciting than a séance.” O’Malley had been the cherub-faced idiot, then. “The rest are clever enough, you’ll find, and earnest in their interest. They just … don’t always pay attention. Still too caught up in life on this side of the veil to notice what pokes through from the other side.”

“And why are you telling _me_ all this,” Calliope asked. She tilted her head and fluttered her lashes, making it look like she was angling for a compliment. Her curiosity was real, though. Real and biting.

He mirrored her look – tilted head, a flutter of long lashes, a low, soft voice pitched just for her ears. “You, Miss Jones, seem like the type of person who notices a great deal.”

Calliope’s pulse gave a lurch.

_He was going to be trouble._

…..

They went up to Pennsylvania in March for an estate sale. They made a holiday of it, stopping by other shops and auctions on their way. Malcolm had a penchant for objects with a history and an almost obsessive love of provenance, but he could admit that sometimes the strongest, weirdest, most interesting things came with no history and no warning. They just _were_. That’s what they were on the prowl for.

Things had been going well until they hit Adamstown. There, in the close quarters of a second rate curiosity shop, they bumped into one of Cal’s old…associates. She feigned ignorance as the man hurled accusations at her. Malcolm played the white knight, defending her honor and ushering them away. She actually felt a pang of conscience at misleading him.

But later, as their jalopy stuttered and shook their way to the next town, she realized just how well he’d played his part, and how transparent she’d been for all her denials. When she got the nerve to ask him why, he said:

“We’ve all got boogeymen at our heels, doll. None of us would be trying so hard to figure out death and beyond if our lives weren’t mucked up to begin with.”

“And everything he said about me; don’t you care?”

“ _Calliope_. I summon demons and collect cursed furniture as a hobby. Romancing one psychic swindler seems a natural extension of my interests."

_Oh, she was in so much trouble_.

….

Calliope Jones did not like the term confidence woman. Oh, it was true enough for what she did, but she didn’t like it. For all the skill it took, it nevertheless implied that what she did was fake. And while she may well have been a confidence woman, she was _not_ a charlatan.

It was one thing to play with people’s perceptions, but at the heart of things, Cal knew the value of _real_. And on some level, most people knew it too. It was why so many of the hustlers and cultists she’d run with had circled the drain, no matter how good their premise; why the spiritualist towns kept lingering on even when the leadership was chock full of Reuben’s and saps.

Calliope wanted real. She wanted to bring it to the people. And she wanted to make bucket loads of cold, crisp cash doing it. Was it really too much to want respect for her skills and talents? Just because she could pierce the veil of the arcane, read in the library of souls, and get out of the bar a full half hour before the cops shut a place down, she got laughed at and stared at like a freak. That was going to stop. She was going to _make_ it stop. She was already on her way.

Malcolm was a man with money and class – what one couldn’t buy, the other would – and people were already treating her better for being at his side. Cal and Mal, people were calling them. Their last party had people come all the way from Chicago to see her conjure. A few familiar faces had shown up from her days in New York and Boston, but they were on the way out while Cal was on the way _up_. Nobody who knew anything dared say a word against her now.

And Malcolm kept buying her things. Wonderful things. Trinkets at first – jewelry that would strengthen one power or weaken another, give her weird dreams or clarity of intent. Then she caught his excitement for the weirder things, his “cursed furniture” hobby.

He bought her a mirror.

A full length mirror with cloudy glass and a strange frame. Marble and wood and wrought iron curled around one another in simple shapes and child-like curlicues. It gave Cal a queer feeling to look at it for too long.

_This is trouble._

_Hush._

Malcolm said he’d had a devil of a time finding out the history, but at least three people had died in front of it over the past half century, and didn’t some of the shapes resemble Nordic runes when you looked at them at an angle, and do you like it there’s something about it that just made me think of you and I knew you had to have it please say you like it.

Cal loved it. She had the house staff place it in her study adjoining the alter-room.


	9. Renata III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monica is not winning any Mother of the Year awards any time soon.

Everything was going wrong.

It had taken Monica a while to notice. Maybe too long, she could admit that. She’d had a lot on her plate – the new house and her clients and Mark…. Renata had fallen through the cracks somewhere along the way. That happened with kids. Especially quiet ones. Renata had always been quiet, hadn’t she?

Mark would know.

Would’ve known.

Fuck.

Monica had passed off a lot – too much, as it turned out – as Renata hating the house. And then there was grief to contend with, and the contrariness of puberty, and – and no one could blame her for letting a few things slide, for not paying attention.

But some of this was just –

How did she explain –

Renata hadn’t even _been_ there when –

Deep breaths.

It was best to start at the beginning. With a list.

  * They’d moved into the new house. Renata had hated it. (That stung, but it didn’t matter now.)
  * Mark had died. Renata had said… _something_ about it, she hadn’t been paying attention. (Hadn’t wanted to hear.)
  * The house had started to become a mess. Mark had always pulled his weight around the household and she knew she’d miss it, but this was more than just clutter or laziness. Monica had scolded (yelled at) Renata more than once about it. She’d denied doing anything the first time Monica had confronted her. After that, she just took the criticism in silence. (She should’ve known something was wrong then, with herself if not with her daughter. Why did she keep _yelling_?)
  * The mess became chaos. Drawers open, clothing sprawled about, lights left on. Renata’s bedroom was the worst of all. When Monica came to wake her in the morning, it always looked like a bomb had gone off. Monica had thought she was acting out as part of her grief – she certainly looked tired enough to have stayed up all night wrecking the place. (She should’ve done something then. Sent her to live with her parents or cousins or _something_. But she hadn’t wanted to fail.)
  * Then she saw Mark. Or she thought she saw him. Something like him. But sad. It was her own grief, undoubtedly. Grief did funny things to the brain. And she was tired. And stressed about Renata. Hallucinations weren’t out of the question. But Renata had been there. And she’d seen. Monica had been the one to deny it.
  * Renata stopped sleeping in her room. Monica had gone to wake her one morning and found her bed empty. Renata was next door in the small, empty study, sleeping on the floor. Eventually, Renata had pulled her mattress off her bed and into the adjoining room. (Monica was sure she’d said something about it, but she couldn’t remember. She struggled to recall much of anything she said to Renata anymore.)
  * She came home early one day, hours before Renata was supposed to be done at camp, and all the lights were on. There were footsteps in the kitchen. She’d crept to the phone in the living room, heart in her throat, ready to run back through the open front door in a flash. She’d called the police. Then she’d waited in her entryway for thirty damn minutes for a cruiser, (Mark had been right about the neighborhood Goddamn her pride) all the while hearing someone rifle through her kitchen cabinets and play with her blender and microwave. The cops didn’t find anyone in the house (though she’d heard them right up until the officers crossed the threshold) and there was no sign of forced entry and nothing was missing, though they agreed the place looked like someone had tossed it. Renata came home an hour later, looked at the chaos, and started cleaning up. Like there was nothing wrong with the scenario. Like this was the same as it always was. (And it was, wasn’t it? The same mess Monica had always lain at Renata’s feet. But it wasn’t her, this time. Not any time, as it turned out.)



And now here she was. With her dream house from Hell. She could barely afford it without Mark, _couldn’t_ afford it with the electric bill skyrocketing as it was, and she had no one to blame but herself.

Monica sat in Renata’s abandoned room, perched on the edge of her box-spring. Renata had left already for camp, Monica would have to leave for work soon. She had some time, though. Time to think.

She looked mournfully at the scattered clothing and toys, chaos she knew Renata would never have done. That wasn’t her daughter, had never been her daughter, and it shamed her to realize how conveniently she’d forgotten that. She looked into the mirror in the corner, a big hulking thing which had come with the house, and which she’d thought would suit a growing girl wonderfully. It was pretty ugly after all, wasn’t it. The glass was too cloudy to be functional, and the base and frame had none of the grace the other furniture did. It was course and archaic. ‘Masculine’ was too kind an adjective, ‘unrefined’ barely scratched the surface. How the hell had she ever thought it a good fit for an eleven year-old girl? Even the room itself was…oddly dark, now that she was spending some time here.

God, the entire room was a physical embodiment of her tunnel-vision.

She stood and walked to the mirror, sizing it up. Maybe she could get some of the guys from the warehouse to help her move it. In time, she could get it appraised, maybe sell it or unload it on a client she didn’t like. To start, though, she just wanted to get it out of the house. With all that metal and marble, it would probably take another two, maybe three people to move it safely. She could ask Carla tomorrow-

“Oh no you don’t.”

The voice – a woman’s – came from behind her. Monica turned, caught a glimpse of sallow skin, short blonde hair, a feathered headband, and –

She woke up on Renata’s box-spring, surrounded by the mess of one of her pre-pubescent tantrums. Well, Monica certainly wasn’t going to clean up her messes. She’d tell Renata as much after work, when they were both home. Mark never would’ve let it stand, either.

It wasn’t until she was in the car, driving, halfway to work, that she realized she was crying. Why had she been crying? And why, all day long, was she hounded by the same thought?

_Everything was wrong. Herself most of all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2019, guys!
> 
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	10. Matti IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A grave is disturbed.

He has spent an age in the dark, entombed in the black earth with his king. Time has given him the chance to calm, to think, to change. He is a different sort of monster than he was before. Less angry, more cunning. The earth is dark and warm and calm, and his king died angry and full of despair while _he_ goes on.

The Shadow, that wretched witch, taught him well before the end. He knows how to reach out from his shiny prison, how to watch the world, listen to it. Sometimes he hates her for it. For teaching him but not freeing him. But not always. The earth is dark and warm and calm, and he is never bored.

He watches the world changing. The village grows, then vanishes; is rebuilt, differently, with different people, speaking a different tongue. The cycle repeats. The stars change. A few of them go out. He has decided to embrace his longevity. It’s not Valhalla, but it’s enough. And all the time, the new villages come closer, dig nearer; eventually, someone will reach him.

One day, someone does.

The earth is broken and his resting place uncovered. The torch light is blinding. A hand reaches for him, sweating and trembling. The man attached reeks of fear. He reaches out and tests his power against the mans’ spirit, but he is not quick enough. The gem – himself – is quickly passed to yet another hand, this one gloved, steady, and confident. He cannot feel this man, cannot read his nature. There is something about him though...something that reminds him of the Angel and the Shadow. Something clever. He wonders at what price this freedom is bought.

…..

The price, he discovers, is aggravation. Like the Angel and Shadow indeed, with hands full of magic and head full of puzzles. But the women never talked so much, never gloated so shamelessly. They let their competence speak for them and it made them fearsome. This fool made a mockery of his own power with every utterance.

He called himself Alchemist. A seeker of secrets. The grave of an ancient king with mythic power was just the latest secret he’d sought. And how _proud_ he was of his discovery, of his next step, of what he could do with this power now at his disposal.

Ridiculous.

He sits untouched on a shelf for days, moons, years. The Alchemist has plans, _oh so many plans_. He talks about them _always_. But there is always another step that must be attended to, another component to find or to make. There is time to watch the world, to study it. To study his captor. It takes the Alchemist an age to realize that the mayhem of his workroom is more than common disorder.

 _You may be full of power, but your form is that of a simple quartz_ , the Alchemist warns once he catches on. _You can be broken_.

As if that isn’t what he wants.

It takes years more. Years during which he learns – of the world, of witchcraft and science, of magic and the veil of souls. Years in which he and the Alchemist come to loath each other with the ease and comfort of repetition.

Spring is in the air. Winter is in the Alchemist’s bones. He’s been making something. A frame – twisting boughs of wood and spindly metal. A mixture of silver and mercury and tin sits at the ready. That day, he brings in a glass-maker. The Alchemist is making a mirror.

They speak and he sends the glass-maker away, tells him to return on the morrow. He will have the rest of the supplies ready then. And they are alone again. As always.

He turns to the shelf and plucks the stone from it’s spot, touching it for the first time in an age. There is no glove now. No firm grasp. The Alchemist is weak; he could influence him easily, take that withered body for his own. But to what end?

The Alchemist speaks, in the same arrogant tone he’s always used. But now, there is a stream of covetousness winding its’ way between the words. He cradles the stone between weathered hands.

_Such power. You have…so much power. And it’s just going to waste, sitting in a rock. I have a way, now. I had to be sure it would work. Had to be sure I could keep you. Now I’m sure. There’s so much more I can do._

He barely noticed when the Alchemist set him down. Didn’t notice when he picked up the blacksmiths hammer.

_I just need what’s inside of you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're a week into 2019! How're we all doing? Good? We're two-thirds of the way through this story, and set to finish in February if I can keep my fingers to the keyboard. I'm a little leery of how this came out. I love this character, but he's still unnamed as of this point in the story and it's hell trying to make sure the reader knows which he is he. Ugh. Once everything is done, I'll probably come back in a year to clean up and edit, but that's a ways off. In the meanwhile, enjoy and please please PLEASE comment if you have any suggestions for bettering this mess.
> 
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	11. Calliope IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Calliope goes mad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I had some in-story logistics to cement and it took a little longer than expected to sort them out. I can hold a lot of details in my head regarding my own stories, so I don’t always write them down, thinking I’ll remember. This is not a recommended method of story writing, kids. Always write down you’re head stuffs, lest you forget you already had that bad idea before and you end up having to keep revisiting it again and again, each time having to take it out back like Old Yeller anyway. Chapter 12 is already in the works. It may be longer? Honestly, I may take a break from updating for a week or two to just write everything out and find the best points of division from there. So if you don’t see chapter 12 before the end of the month, that’s why.

Calliope went mad.

Oh, not all at once. That would be boring. And Cal hated to be boring.

No, Calliope’s madness started off small. With little things that shouldn’t have gotten to her so badly, like the shadows and the voices. She knew, of course, they were coming from the mirror. She knew they weren’t real – not in the important ways, at any rate. But still. They started to itch at her. Started to make her feel just a little bit….

Stretched.

She ignored it for a good long while; laughed it off with Malcolm. Oh, he was getting it too, but from a different direction. Things kept getting moved around the house. His things. Important things. Documents of provenance, contracts and receipts of sale, translations, tomes. And he had awful nightmares. Fires and knives and hangings and hammers and death. Death everywhere. Death by accident. Death by design. He was the killer. He was the one being killed.

Really, it should’ve been Malcolm going mad.

But no, it was Calliope. And she knew it. Knew it was happening. Could feel her mind slip slip _slipping_ around like walking barefoot on ice, on a bloody floor, on tear stained glass.

Was it when she started talking to the mirror? No, it started before that; she wouldn’t have spoken with it so much if the ground weren’t already so slippery. Would’ve known better, would’ve listened to her gut to the voice inside to that voice she’d loved and relied on and hated when it told her this was _too big too hungry too much_.

But Cal herself was too big and too hungry and too much, and how dare something think it was more _anything_ than her? And that voice had long ago started saying too many things she disagreed with. With fear and reason done away with, it was only her ego with her when she confronted the mirror.

_I know what you’re doing_ , she’d told it in the same firm voice she used to summon spirits and conjure elements and bring well-heeled rubes to their knees. _We both do. So unless you want to keep company with the farm equipment in some hillbillies’ shed, you’ll knock it off right now_.

Then the mirror had... _shown her something_ in its’ cloudy glass.

The next thing she knew, Malcolm was shaking her by the shoulders many hours later.

…..

Calliope started losing time after that. An hour here, a day there. She didn’t mind it. She’d done worse when she was still with that laudanum ‘brotherhood’. This was well within her acceptable parameters for occult shenanigans. And the mirror showed her so much! She couldn’t really remember most of it yet, but in time she would. The mirror would help her with that, too. Help her break past the barriers that corporealism placed on the mind so that she could see _beyond_ and understand what she saw.

There was so much power in the mirror. Power and knowledge, kept and stewarded for ages, waiting for someone to be ready for it. _Worthy_ of it. Cal was worthy. She knew she was. She had to be.

The mirror told her so.

…..

There were people in there. A whole little world of people in the glass who’d given their knowledge and power to it. Made it smart and strong. Made it _ready_.

_For Calliope._

This was what she’d been looking for all these years, what she kept running towards in her secret heart of hearts, no matter how much how much pain it’d brought, how much trouble. A _place_. No, more than that. A _legacy_. _For_ her. _About_ her. All these people and all their power and all this time they had been waiting for her find them and be ready for them.

She was now. Nearly.

There were still people she hadn’t seen. Things she couldn’t bring back from the beyond, couldn’t remember. Couldn’t _keep_.

There was something _old_ in there Calliope hadn’t grasped yet. Oh, the old wizard liked to puff himself up as the biggest fish in this sea, the originator, the maker. But Cal knew his type. She listened to only half of what he said and trusted maybe half of that. Besides, he was only, what, 17th century Dutch? (she’d been getting better at her history since shacking up with Malcolm) That was much too young for what she felt looming, lurking, listening beyond the glass.

She needed it to acknowledge her.

So Calliope would sit before the mirror for as long as it took, no matter how many days she lost, or how worried it made dear Malcolm. She would sit there until that old, old thing spoke to her and found her worthy. Until she could bring it – _all_ of it – back from the place beyond. It was Calliope’s legacy, after all. Held in trust, but hers all the same. And she would do with it as she willed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My birthday is this week! Consider supporting me on Patreon or buying me a tea!
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	12. Renata IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A storm is coming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> February's hiatus was brought to you by the letter B for BS writers block and overthinking, and by the number 3 for the 3 hour long nap that gave me the strength to finish tonight.

There was a storm coming. Renata felt it coming over her like a flu. It was in her limbs, in her gut. It was in the sweat beading along her spine and above her lips. It was tangled deep between her lungs, beside her heart, tucked up against her fear.

Fear itself had become another organ, a second self. She carried it with her everywhere. It was there in the morning, when she woke from fitful sleep. It sat beside her at breakfast as she watched the exits and flinched at sudden noise. It followed her to school and whispered with every hourly chime that she was that much closer to going back. At dinner, it filled the silence between Renata and her mother with everything she couldn’t say, and in the bath and at bedtime, it echoed the pound of her heart as she waited for something, anything, to happen.

The house was a bully. Renata had had bullies before (Paula in fourth grade and Dustin last year, both of whom had suddenly decided to hate her for reasons she sort of did and sort of didn’t understand). She was familiar with their need to hurt without cause, to terrorize, to hide from accountability, to shift the blame, to win at some game only they had the rules to. She gotten good at fighting back, at being cruel and sneaky in her own defense. Daddy had said it was because she was smarter, because where they were doing it for fun, she did it with a purpose. Then he’d said they probably shouldn’t tell Mama about the _thing_ with the egg drop experiment. Or the letters. Definitely not the letters. She didn’t have the same appreciation for vengeance as him.

But she’d never had to _live_ with her bully. Never had them rifle through her stuff and watch her as she slept. And she’d never been without someone to _talk_ to about it.

Renata was scared and she was tired from how scared she was and how the scaredness kept her from sleeping. And she was lonely. Lonelier than she’d ever been. Daddy was gone and Mama was just Monica now and she had no friends. Elementary school had been hard sometimes, but there were still people who liked her. The kids at school had already made fun of her just for liking Sailor Moon and all that other “white” stuff; Renata had thought everyone liked Sailor Moon. What would they say to ghosts?

Renata’s only respite – from the fear and the loneliness – had been the school library. It was a small classroom with poor lighting, and most of the books were mustier than anything Monica would’ve let her bring home. And the librarian, Ms. Rose was old and big and terrifying. But she liked that Renata was quiet and read children’ abridged classics and Nancy Drew and earth science books and didn’t bother her much, and Renata had heightened standards for terror anyway. She would spend most afternoons there, usually until the school building closed at 6, before she walked back to the house. Most days, Monica would be home at the same time as Renata, 6:30 or so. And even if she stayed late, Renata could hide in the little lot they called a backyard, sheltered under a sympathetic fig tree. They were both cursed after all, weren’t they?

But there was no library sanctuary today.

A hurricane was sweeping its’ way up the coast, knocking out power grids and flooding roads. It was due to hit the city soon and school had let out early to try beat the coming deluge. Ms. Rose wouldn’t – couldn’t – let Renata stay. The only place to go was the house. Still, Renata dragged her feet. The yellow sky cast an ominous light on familiar streets, but Renata felt like it was a warning for more than the weather. It was a warning for _her_.

 _Trouble ahead. Beware_.

Renata already knew that.

Monica was still at work. Her job didn’t close just because the schools did. And even if it did close early for the storm, there was still traffic to fight through, and last minute groceries to buy. Monica had a _thing_ about preparedness and she would still drive into the county to shop, no matter how much longer it took. Renata would be alone in the house.

Renata was always alone, wasn’t she?

 _No_ , she answered herself, _not like this_.

She stood before the house, suddenly aware. She was aware of the street and neighboring houses, all empty. Aware of the vacant park behind her. Aware of the rushing wind and the absence of birdsong. She was aware of a hundred empty windows looking at her from dozens of empty houses. And one house, that was very much full, looking at her like a meal. She was aware that she was very small. And that no one was coming to help.

Renata had thought she was beyond tears. And yet hot wetness crept from her eyes down her cheeks and pooled under her chin. She felt a sudden stab of frustration. Crying was for babies and grief, and she was neither. She was eleven and her dad had died months ago; she should be over this by now. But she wasn’t, and as she stood petrified before her front door, the tears came faster, hotter, and her breath became ugly sobs, and she felt so _stupid_ but she couldn’t stop. Months of fear and stress and stress and fear and grief, yes still grief, came out in a torrent with no end in sight.

Then the rain started.

At first, Renata only felt cool water mix with hot on her face. But then water began to seep through her clothes, cold and stinging, another layer to add to her misery. It was hard to mark time while crying. Renata only knew that it was getting darker as more, heavier clouds rolled in, and a few neighbors came home, although they didn’t seem to see her. It was still too soon for Monica to come home.

Finally – _finally_ – when her shivering became more intense than her crying, Renata realized she had to do something. The rain was falling harder, icy and stinging like needles, and the wind was shaking the trees in the park and flinging around trash and trash cans. The fig tree would offer no protection, not that Renata thought it would in any sort of serious weather. She didn’t know any neighbors, and they seemed fine with that. She had no friends nearby, hadn’t seen her old friends since she moved.

Her grandparents would come. They were sort of fighting with Monica, so she hadn’t seen them much since the funeral, but they’d come if she called them. The phone was inside the house, though.

Her heart froze in her chest.

She would be fast. Run through the door, past the foyer and the stairs, to the cordless phone resting in its cradle halfway down the hallway. Then high tail it back outside. The house couldn’t get to her that quickly, could it?

Her body wouldn’t move forward.

Icy fingers fumbled in her backpack for her house keys. She could do this. She _could_. There wasn’t another option.

She climbed the steps, key in hand. She had started crying again. When did that happen? The door was in front of her and all that remained was opening it and running. She breathed. She dropped her backpack to lighten her load. Anything to be faster. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t. But it had to be now, before she lost her nerve.

Renata stretched out her hand, key ready.

It opened. Before she touched it, the door opened.

A sob lived and died in her chest. Of course. Of course the house was ready for her. Bullies always knew to strike out of sight.

The sky cracked with thunder and the rain came down hard and sharp. The wind pushed her. Pushed, pushed, _pushed_ at her to go inside. How could she fight this? She was just a girl.

 _No_ , she thought, angry at herself. She was a girl, but she wasn’t _just_ anything. She certainly wasn’t a child. She wiped at her tears – baby tears – and pushed the sobs down down down. She was afraid. But she’d been afraid for months. She knew something terrible was coming. But that had been obvious for forever, too. She was probably going to die. That was – she didn’t know what to think about that. The concept was too big. Or too small. Or too new. All she really understood was that she wouldn’t be _here_ anymore. But there was only Monica to really miss her and Monica didn’t seem to care whether Renata was anywhere at all so long as she didn’t make a mess.

She couldn’t stop what was coming. She understood that now. That was what she’d been feeling all this time, what she’d thought was fear. It was the inevitability of all this, whatever _this_ was. She’d only be able to find out inside. And she’d only step through those doors as herself.

Renata swung the door open the rest of the way and stepped into the eye of the storm.


	13. Matti V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ends begin to meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...to be fair, I did read something stupid like 17 books last month while I procrastinated working on this, so at least I worked REALLY HARD in another direction while I left you all hanging.
> 
> Also, The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert is super good and I'm excited for the sequel.
> 
> Also also, if you go on Youtube, there are a ton of audio-readings of M. R. James short stories, and if you like ghost stories, you should definitely give him a shot. I've been listening to them while I walk to and from work. Quality late 19th century/early 20th century spook. Especially good if you like your ghouls mixed with history.

The Alchemist was dead. Not that that shut him up a bit, but if there were anything worthwhile to be found in this thrice cursed calamity, it was that he could finally ignore the idiot.

The smashing of the stone had stunned him. It was a novel feeling after ages of impermeability, and it set his consciousness adrift for a while. When he was himself again, the crushed remains of the stone had been somehow fused with the material of the looking glass. The mirror and its’ stand sat perfect and whole and full of power. The workshop in which it stood lay in ruins. The Alchemist’s body sprawled lifeless at its’ feet.

He didn’t fully understand what the Alchemist had done, but he grasped the workings of it easily enough; what it _was_ rather than what had been _intended_. The Alchemist himself had yet to do that much; was, in fact, still struggling to understand he was really, truly dead.

The _goal_ of the Alchemist – the bare bones of it – had been to siphon the power of the stone and add it to his own. The mirror would serve the receptacle, a reservoir with its placid surface like that of a well, and he would draw from it or fill it again as he needed. His reflection would absorb the progression time, taking from the Alchemist the woes of advancing age, his ailments and injuries. The frame, with all its twisting boughs and clever carvings, would keep the power contained.

That was what he understood were the intentions. Which were transparently idiotic.

He’d only known three witching folk; the Angel, the Shadow, and the Alchemist himself. Yet from just these three, he knew the Alchemist’s plan to be flawed. The Alchemist _already_ had a surfeit of power; that much could be felt just by his presence. That power on its own would’ve forestalled death as it had for the Angel, as it probably had for the Shadow as well. The mirror trick was a good one and could’ve worked without any external power source. All it would’ve taken was a simple deposit of some of his own strength. The reflective nature of the mirror would’ve grown the power with only a small cantrip or two.

The frame was perhaps the only well thought out part of the scheme, and even that had become….

Here was what the thing truly _was_.

The power the Alchemist wanted was _him_ , his _soul_ , with his mind and manner attached. The blow of crushing the stone had hurt him, but it hadn’t been nearly enough to separate him from himself. So into the mirror he went, all of him, with his power as inaccessible to the Alchemist now as when the Shadow had first taught him self-control.

The looking glass itself was a drowning deep, a fathomless sea waiting to be filled. But it was not without boundaries. The place he inhabited within the mirror-well was separate from the space the Alchemist did. They could communicate, if they wished, but he had nothing to say to that madman, and so he existed in his bubble, solitary and silent. He didn’t understand at all how it worked, only that it did.

The frame was a true prison. He regretted now that he’d flung the word so carelessly at the stone he’d been confined within. The stone had kept him from true death, had tied him to a place, but he could see and feel. The world had not been closed to him. Now, he had his bubble – the last breath of a drowning man – and nothing else.

…..

Time passed. It must have. More bubbles accumulated, more muffled voices in the dark. How he longed for rest.

He looked out sometimes from the mirrors edge. Let his bubble rise to the surface and peered up where the water was thinnest. There were rooms painted in the colors of spring and edged in swirling gold. Dark, narrow halls, dusty and depressing. Close dens with roaring fire and couches and books. Rooms destroyed by fire or slicked with blood. Sometimes there were people. Sometimes there were only bodies and a new voice in the distance.

He wondered, _was the Alchemist still at work, still meddling for power with half-conceived plans, like a calve born too soon?_

Or was the mirror on its own a greater terror than either of them had imagined?

…..

Something was looking for him. A leviathan was swimming in these dead waters, hunting for prey.

He caught a glimpse of her. Once. Pale skin and yellow hair. A tunic that shimmered like sunlight on the water. Or the scales of a wyrm. Eyes that devoured.

But he was a monster as well. Let her try him.

…..

The child sunk and sunk and screamed with everything but her voice. Shouts of despair. Defiance. Drowning but not yet drowned. The little sooted girl. She’d held out longer than he’d thought. What remained of her father would be proud. _He_ was proud. And wasn’t that a strange feeling after all this time.

The girl was dead, of that there was no doubt. But she wasn’t _done_. There was the heart of a warrior in her still, and the will of one. But she didn’t know how to fight.

He knew of little else. And he was sick of the dark.

He reached out, and-


	14. Calliope V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? An update? Madness!

There was something _alive_ in there. On the other side of that warped, foggy glass, a cruel and hungry sentience watched. And to Malcolm’s horror, it was talking to Calliope.

John Malcolm Howard had brought this on himself. He’d known the mirror was something more when he bought it. He’d _wanted_ more. More for himself. More to impress Calliope.

_Calliope_. A woman who herself was so much more than anyone he’d ever known. He’d done this for her, and now she was…. It was all his fault.

The facts were these: there was a will and a mind and a blood soaked provenance that went hand in hand with that mirror. He’d downplayed the number of deaths for Cal – he’d wanted to thrill her, not scare her – but now he knew he’d done the wrong thing. The mirror was something to be feared, and instead Cal had been entirely thrilled with it.

They’d brought it home from the dealer with help. Hired men had maneuvered the awkward piece of furniture upstairs, all the way to the top of the house. There was a smaller bedroom next to the alter room on the third floor. Malcolm had used it for storage mostly – paperwork and antiquities that weren’t relevant or important enough to keep in his primary office. But he’d cleaned it up and given it to Calliope when she moved in. He’d wanted her to feel welcome, to have a space of her own. Naturally, her mirror should go with her things.

She had seemed so grateful, Malcolm hadn’t thought anything of it when she spent more and more time ‘meditating’ in front of her present. Calliope had an enviable gift with the other side, and Malcolm only wanted to help her hone it. The more she could do, the more _they_ could do. _Together_.

Soon, she’d started spending every evening before the mirror. That turned into hours. Then days. Now, she rarely left the third floor, and when she did, it was to wander the house wraith-like, scaring the servants and agitating his artifacts.

The house in Union Square was full of the fruits of Malcolm’s labors. Paintings with eyes that watched him cross the room, or went walking when no one was there to miss them. The chandelier that murmured as though a terse dinner party were still politely arguing under its’ defuse light, still building towards a violent climax. An assortment of totems and exotic fetishes that left an unpleasant hum in his teeth when he got too close. Malcolm was used to this.

Since the mirror had come, everything had changed. Before, the feeling of all these items had been merely disquieting. The sensation of mostly latent magics swirled through the air like so much dust, tickling the senses like a sneeze that never manifests. Now, it was like the house was under siege.

Menace filled the air with the shifting of light. The knowledge that he was being hunted woke him from sleep he didn’t remember succumbing to. The groans of a house settling became the cry of vanquished prey, the violent thumping from the third floor the chilling roar of a triumphant predator.

And it was his fault. His pride, his hubris. Malcolm had thought he could handle the mirror, whatever its curse may be. And why shouldn’t he be capable? He’d been researching the arcane for years. While most of his contemporaries were happy to play at séances and table tipping, he’d gone further. Studied more. Spent more.

And there was the catch. He’d assumed that his paltry devotion had meant something. He’d measured himself against hobbyists and thought himself a master.

He was wrong.

And now, he was frightened.

Malcolm had been frightened for weeks. Months. It had become his master, directing him to ignore this, accept that, leave Cal alone up there. Well, he wouldn’t succumb anymore. He summoned his courage, even as the fear reached a fever pitch inside him. It made every step forward a struggle. Fear stole through him with every shuddering beat of his heart as he ascended to the third floor. Still, he climbed. If he did nothing else right, he would at least save Calliope.

It was so dark up there. The sun was still up; some bit of sunshine should’ve shone through the curtains or around door jams. And yet, the third floor landing and all that lay beyond it was stygian. The electric lights wouldn’t turn on at the landing or in the hall. He carried a hurricane lamp in one hand, the other clutched the railing. The lamp’s flame writhed fretfully in the windless passage.

Whose house was this? Malcolm didn’t know anymore. Once it had been his. It had been his with every chill down the spine and every sensation you had been dreaming while awake. His house had been tricky and unsettling and more his than his own body. This dark, violent thing he climbed into wasn’t his house. It wasn’t him.

And he refused to leave Calliope to this stranger.

The door to the altar room was clearly visible. Malcolm didn’t understand how. He didn’t know how he’d passed Calliope’s study. He didn’t remember when he reached the top of the stairs. But there he was, before a door illuminated by no light. The hurricane lamp shook in his hand, but its’ paltry flame lit himself and little else.

His mind went blank. Should he go back and try find Calliope’s door? Should he knock? Should he try the handle? What was he _here_ for?

The door opened.

“There you are, Malcolm. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Calliope was radiant. Calliope was dismal. Malcolm didn’t know what he was looking at.

When he looked at her, he saw the woman he loved in the peak of health. Rosy-cheeked, hair coiffed and shining gold, her silk blouse and trousers pressed to perfection. She was sallow and greasy and rumpled. She smiled that same sweet smile he loved but her eyes- her eyes looked at him with a purposeful blankness. She was looking at him but seeing something else. Malcolm shuddered. His hands went numb and he dropped the lamp.

“Are you coming in or not?” Her tone was casual, unbothered. As though it hadn’t been a month since he’d last laid eyes on her. “If you are, scoot along in. I’ve got so much going on, and while I’d just love to share it with you, I’m not prepared to do so in the doorway.”

“Cal, wha- what’s going on?” Malcolm asked, his ears ringing and his muscles trembling. He was afraid. Why, though? Why was he afraid of Calliope?

She pulled him in by his shirt collar. The door shut snugly behind them. “This _mirror_ is what’s going on, sweetie-pie! It’s the very bees knees. Did you know there’s a whole _world_ in there? It’s itty bitty, of course, but still! _Lots_ of people to talk to. I’m learning so much all the time.” She looked at him again. Her eyes were bright and her smile hungry. “Have you come to learn with me? I’ve been waiting, you know.”

“Cal, I –“The words were swimming in his stuffy head, sticking to his clumsy tongue. He swallowed and began again. “Calliope, I think you should come with me. I think we should leave this room. The house. You, you need some sun- we BOTH need some sun, yes? The summer is almost over and we, we haven’t gone holidaying at all.” Why did she look at him like that? Why was she so cold?

“That’s silly, love. Why would I leave when I have your wonderful gift here?” She gestured to the wall behind her and he could suddenly see the rest of the room.

The altar had been dismantled. The carpet rolled aside and new, unfamiliar runes and circles were chalked into the wood. And the mirror. Where his altar had once stood, the mirror loomed tall and silent as tomb. The glass- there was, there was someone in the glass?

“There are oceans in there no living human has swum in before. And I can go no matter the weather. I don’t even need a bathing suit,” she said coyly.

Even now, Malcolm might’ve risen to the bait. Even with her strange expression and his vision doubling and everything about this situation so, so _wrong_.

His face had gone numb, though. And his tongue swollen. _Cal_ , he wanted to say. _Cal, help me. I love you. Help me_.

“Oh, my poor Mal,” she cooed. “My poor white knight.” She held him up with unnatural strength as his legs failed him, and walked him to the mirror. “Coming to save me from the wicked witch like a good boy. Oh!” She gasped in a mimicry of surprise. “But didn’t you know? I thought I’d been very clear, daddio!”

Malcolm’s senses began shutting down, one by one, as blood filled his mouth and ears and eyes, and his palms and feet began to bleed from the pores. But he was still unlucky enough to understand what was coming. To see Calliope’s reflection in the mirror as she brought him ever closer to the place of sacrifice. To know suddenly and surely that this was _her_ house.

She kissed his forehead. One sweet benediction before the end.

“I _am_ the witch.”

He faded to black before the rest.

\---

The Halloween party was a smashing success, even before the ceremony. Everyone was so gay and bright in their costumes. The bubbly was flowing and the food was going down well. Calliope hadn’t hired a band, but the guests were happy enough to amuse themselves with a pedal organ (Malcolm had salvaged it from desecrated church some years back), and a Victrola phonograph he had been sentimental over.

The crowd had reached the part of the night where everyone was making up ghastly new lyrics to the old tunes. They weren’t very good lyrics, but they were funny. Everything was funny with enough wine and good food. And besides, if anyone had reason to wonder whether they should laugh or not, they only had to look to Cal for guidance. Smooth, sophisticated Cal would never laugh at anything tacky. Why, she’d thrown this party and it was the height of good taste. Malcolm certainly had one hell of a doll running his house for him, the lucky schmo.

That was what they all thought, Cal could tell.

Of course, they did ask after Malcolm. That was to be expected – it was his house, his friends, his little woman running the show. Where oh where was the man himself?

“Oh, the poor sugar bear is resting up top. Bad luck, you know, though really, it does give me my chance to repay the kindness. Hadn’t I told you before? Oh, well, you remember how sweet he was, taking care of me this past summer when I got so sick. Whisked me right off to Europe as soon as the doc said I was well enough to travel. Wanted me to recuperate somewhere special. Never been treated so well in all my life. Yes! You remember, the house was all shut up. And he was so devoted to me, he clean forgot to mention where we’d gone to anyone else, the dear! Well no sooner did we get back, with me right as rain, then he fell sick himself! The doctors say it’s nothing to worry about – just a tenacious cold – but it gives him such a head, he says he’s not fit for company. You’d better believe I tried to get him to cancel, but he refused. Said everyone was expecting it, couldn’t let folks down. Yes, ‘good old Malcolm,’ you said it. Anyway, I’m sure he’ll come out when the crowd thins a little. And he promised he’ll join us later, when we go upstairs for the final part of the night, you know he’d never miss a summoning on Halloween. And he has missed all of you. We both have. It was so nice to be together over the summer, but surely you all know how dearly Malcolm holds his friends. I’m sure it’ll do him a world of good to see everyone tonight. I know I feel revived seeing everyone again and I don’t have half the history that you all share with Mal.”

This was said with an abundance of sincerity, her eyes wide and expressive, her lips turned up in the sweetest of smiles. This woman whom they’d met nearly a year ago, summoning demons at a party she’d crashed uninvited, was as much a saint to their eyes as Peter who’d someday judge their shallow souls at the pearly gates. The women clasped her hands with feeling. The men agreed with her, with meaningful nods and exclamations of Malcolm’s dependability.

Questions answered and their purpose restated, Malcolm’s inner circle of lackeys and lackwits got to work. The uninitiated (the useless) were gently hurried out as the witching hour approached. The music was silenced, the last of the bubbly guzzled, the catering service shown the backdoor. One by one and two by two, they followed Calliope up to the third floor.

Tonight was to be like any other night they gathered. Tonight was to be unlike anything they’d seen before. Such was the risk with Cal and Mal.

They followed Calliope up. The witching hour was upon them.

\---

“Was that really necessary, girl?” The Alchemist looked on in revulsion.

Calliope frowned. She didn’t like his tone. Plus, she’d just noticed that there was blood splatter on the hem of her favorite party dress. She’d changed into it from her Halloween costume just for the occasion, too. Getting it out of the beading would be hell. Tch.

“It was if you wanted all of them,” she replied in the same tone. Cal dropped the knife by the bodies at her feet. Most everyone had succumbed as soon as the summoning started in earnest , but a few of Malcolm’s old friends had been strong enough and smart enough to try make a run for it. Cal had just been stronger and smarter. And faster. “Besides, since when have you been squeamish? You were happy enough to tell me all your gruesome deeds before.”

The Alchemist fidgeted in the mirror.

“Or,” she said thoughtfully, “have you just never had to hold the knife yourself?”

Bingo. Well, Calliope couldn’t say she hadn’t anticipated as much. The Alchemist talked too much and not well, and Calliope had known enough men of his ilk to expect nothing more from him than what she planned to take.

She stepped daintily over the pooling blood and the sprawl of bodies to return to the mirror. “How’s it going in there? Is everyone settling in alright?”

“More or less,” the Alchemist said, harrumphing. “A few have gathered their wits enough to try hide in the dark, but I’ve got the scent of them.”

“I should come, then,” she said, and pressed her hands to the glass. “Two hunters make shorter work of the prey, after all.”

“I - yes, yes there’s nothing left for you to do here, is there,” he muttered. He looked distracted. Good. Calliope pressed closer to the glass. The power within it leapt to her palms like an eager puppy begging for a pet.

Let the Alchemist distract himself with her sacrifices. It was clear as the nose on his face that he had no idea what he was doing. The mirror overflowed with power. It was waiting – _crying out_ – to be used, and he did nothing with it. Instead he fed on half-awake people. Idiot.

Calliope felt indulgent and let him waffle for a moment longer. Would he try to stall her long enough to account for her sacrifices and face her freshly fed? Or would he bring her into the mirror first to subdue and use to his own ends? It didn’t really matter what he did. Cal was prepared either way.

She pressed her mortal body as close to the mirror as she could get. Arms, head, torso – her heart thundered in her chest, the feeling made more acute by the press of cold, still glass. She wouldn’t feel it again.

She was going to live forever. Not as a ghost, and not shunted back into the reincarnation cycle like some powerless nobody. She would be herself, Calliope Jones, straight through to the rapture and beyond. And not even God himself could do jack shit about it.

It was More. _At_ _last_. At last the power. At last the dominion. At last a place of her own where she could rip off the faces of all these _useless_ _cocks_ who think they know better. She was going to start with this one right here.

_wait_ , said the small strangled inner voice she hated. _wait_ , it begged.

Calliope threw her soul against the glass and killed that voice, along with every other aspect of her earthly vessel.

She swam into the dark, rich waters of the mirror-well-ocean like she was born to. And then she began to hunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left and it's gonna be a doozy!
> 
> Comments make me write faster (and more patrons make me write faster still!)
> 
> www.patreon.com/drowsyreaper/
> 
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